


lessons in intimacy

by v3ilfire



Series: i fought the war, but the war won [9]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5279816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Transitioning from friendship to ... whatever they became after Danarius's death wasn't as easy as they'd hoped. </p><p>(99% fluff, T rating for NSFW mention at the end. Don't get excited.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	lessons in intimacy

Hesta threw her pack down by the door in the same half-second as she began toeing her boots off her heels. She was covered in so many different varieties of entrails that she’d lost count- even Nug couldn’t brave her scent to shower his owner with affection.  
“Don’t give me that look,” she said towards the hound’s nauseated expression. “Or I’ll come hug you.” Nug whined in response, thankfully cut off by Bodhan before Hesta could make any further threats. 

“It is good to see you home safe, Messere!” he said, his voice thickened by the fact that he was holding his nose. “I put your mail on the writing desk and the potions you ordered in your room.”  
“Thank you, Bodhan. You’ve been well?”  
“Spry as a spring leaf, Messere! My boy keeps me busy.”  
“And Orana?”  
“Well, as always. I taught her my family recipe for beef stew while you’ve been gone.”  
“Can’t wait to try it,” Hesta said, finally laying the last part of her grime-covered plating down, though her leathers were not in a much better condition. “I’m going to go… peel all of this off me. If you could clean the plate, I would appreciate it, but I won’t begrudge it if you just… throw it all out.” Hesta tip-toed her way across the carpet and upstairs, eager to throw herself into a hot bath. 

Her bath required three thorough scrubs and a change of water, and at some point she readily considered taking Bodhan’s razor to her entire head. But, with some coaxing, she managed to get the last bit of entrail out of her dark locks and seemed to return to _some_ semblance of a civilized human being and _not_ a half-eaten vagrant who had crawled fresh out of the inside of some beast or another. She refrained from putting a shirt over her breast band, but she did not give up the simple pleasures of her favorite pair of pants and robe, or brushing a palm’s worth of oil through the ends of her hair.

If not for the scars and bruises, she’d _almost_ resemble a noblewoman.

Just as she went to pluck her book from her nightstand, there was a knock at the door. Hesta wrapped her robe about her torso before going to open it.  
“Pardon the interruption, Messere, but Master Fenris has come to see you again.”  
“Again?”  
“He’s been here twice this week already. Worried about your extended leave, I’m sure.  
“Oh,” she said,devoid of any proper response. She had meant to come see him the next day, unsure how much he’d like to be just...  dropped in on. Apparently, he did not share her concerns. “He can come up, if he’d like. And… you can go ahead and tell him that he can just… come in… whenever. This house is open to him.”  
“Of course, Messere. I’ll have him right up.”

Hesta left her door ajar while she went back to her vanity to idly run her brush through her hair one last time, if only to find something to do with her hands.  
“Hello,” he said when he entered, though remained hovering by the door. She turned to him with a smile, but held her spot across the room.  
“Hi,” she said. “Heard you’ve been by.”  
“You were supposed to have returned three days ago. I… was worried.”  
“About little old me?” she laughed, but his eyes trailed down to the scar that ripped right across her abdomen, and suddenly she felt the need to exchange her brush for holding her robe shut.  
“Did … Isabela find what she was looking for?” he tried instead. Hesta snorted, and chucked whatever was sitting next to her brush in his direction. Fenris caught it, and inspected the medallion in his palm - it did not seem unusual by any means, or worth a particular sum.  
“Turn it around.” 

He did, and by the way his eyebrows shot up his forehead, she would wager that he was _not_ expecting to find a wibbly drawing of a penis etched into the thing. Needless to say, he set it down on the nearest surface. “Not even Isabela’s handiwork, but they were all like that. Not worth getting captured by raiders, but _definitely_ worth a laugh.”  
“You were captured by raiders?”  
“For about fifteen minutes, and that was mostly because Varric had fifteen minutes worth of phallic humor. He got quite a _rise_ out of them.” 

Fenris snorted, shifted his weight. Hesta watched him carefully, not daring to move in case she somehow shattered whatever fragile, nameless thing they had begun to nurture between them again in the last month. He was just as tense as she was. “This is weird,” she whispered finally. “Is it weird?”  
“It is … unfamiliar.” 

They didn’t even know how to _greet_ each other. Hellos and friendly jabs sufficed when they were just friends, close-knit and sure. Neither of them knew how to greet each other when matters became complicated again, or how to occupy the same room while alone. Space seemed both too much and not enough, and contact seemed risky at best -so there they stood, silent, leagues apart, gauging the other for some sort of sign.

This, to Hesta, was a call for drastic measures.

“Alright. Come on,” she said as she made her way towards the bed. “Climb in,”  
“Hawke, I -- I’m not sure this is the time.”  
“If you think I have the motivation for sex right now, you and I are not only on different pages, you’re in a different _book_ altogether.”  
“If you need to sleep, I can go back to the mansion,” he said, clearly not understanding where the hell the situation was leading. Hesta stared at him, and then all of the pieces clicked into place all at once. Fenris stared back at her suddenly shocked expression, and waited. 

How does one explain to a grown man that affection does not exclusively belong in the brief span of time between sex and sleep?

“Just… come here,” she said, and pat the bed insistently. “I promise you’ll enjoy it.”  
“And if I don’t?”  
“Then you don’t, and I’ll drop it forever.” 

She’d never broken a promise to him before so, reluctantly, he went to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Mindful of his space, Hesta reached around him and very, _very_ gently, began to pull his body down towards hers. Fenris let her shuffle them both around until he was awkwardly positioned with his head on her chest and her arms draped loosely around him. “You can… get comfortable, you know. Cuddling is a two-participant activity.”

Fenris shifted until he settled, his whole body finally on the bed instead of having his legs draped off its edge. This was not an unfamiliar place -he knew where to lay his head so he could hear her heart fluttering along in her chest, how to fit his arm against the dip of her back. She stroked his hair as he settled, weaving pale fingers through pale hair. Her warmth melted into his and he felt his worrying slipping from his shoulders. Part of him was waiting for her to push the boundaries, to do _something_ , but she never did.

Sure, he’d heard tales upon tales of lovers holding each other through the night, but never were those tales applied to him - to _them_. He never made the connection between _lovers_ and what they had, never thought to replace mid-battle gestures with a stray touch. It was strange new territory, thrilling in its own way. A kiss did not have to be a landmark, an embrace did not have to be precursor to disaster.

They had each other, and they had time. That would take some getting used to.

“... So?”  
“So?”  
“Are you… alright?”  
“Yes,” he said, surprisingly without needing much consideration.  
“You’re sure?”  
“Yes.” Fenris could feel her smile against the top of his head. She pulled her blanket over both of them, only _halfway_ tempted to press her cold feet to his.  
“Alright. We’ll work on this.” 

\---

 The next time Fenris came to visit, Bodhan nearly dropped what he was doing at the sight of him.  
“Oh, good! Messere was hoping you’d stop by. Please, right this way!”  
“I thought she wanted me to let myself in,” he said, clearly confused and, knowing Hawke, more than a little apprehensive.  
“Yes, yes, but she had a very specific set of instructions for the next time you came by.”  
“Enchantment!” Sandal agreed.  
“If you would just stand right by the stairs, serah, yes - just like that.” 

Fenris moved to where Bodhan had gestured him towards, no less confused than he had been a moment beforehand. “Ah - it would do best if you turned towards the stairs.” Once Fenris was finally in proper position, though for _what_ was anyone’s guess, Bodhan called up for the master of the house.

“Messere Hawke! He’s ready!”

He had about a second and a half at _best_.

Hesta whipped around from behind a wall and slid down the banister, presumably with the intent of being caught. Fenris, not being quite in on this plan, only managed to hook his arm around one of her legs, leaving the other lingering on the carpet as she laughed herself breathless at their disaster. At least she had been smart enough to latch her arms about his neck, or he might have dropped her altogether.  
“Do I want to know what that was about, Hawke?”  
“I figured we needed to work on our greetings!”  
“A hello would not suffice?”  
“In my house, we do things with _flair_.” 

Fenris rolled his eyes and decidedly dropped her with about as much warning as she gave him. Hesta landed square on her butt with a yelp, but somehow found more reason to laugh in her pain.  
“Maker, whoever you’ve been hanging around is a terrible influence on your attitude.”  
“She is,” he said with a pointed look.  
“Must also be a _striking_ example of beauty and _terribly_ clever to have so much of your attention,” she shot back.  
“She is,” he said again as he reached down and helped her back to her feet. 

He could tell she wasn’t exactly expecting the affirmation when her face flushed a deep red - not that she was ever terribly hard to read in the _first_ place, but her pallor worked to his advantage more than she knew. Even her forearms seemed to take on a tint that hadn’t been there a minute beforehand, but that may very well have been just a trick of the light.  
“I uh - well, what did you - what did you come here for, again?”  
“Certainly not to practice our acrobatics routine.” 

\---

Things got easier the more they tried. Hawke’s method of taking leaps and bounds and then _dragging_ him to meet her back in the middle seemed to work well enough, as far as her bizarre ideas went. It was _far_ easier once Fenris realized that she was just as nervous and confused as he was about where _their_ middle even was. 

However, soon enough greetings went from awkward doorway standoffs to passing kisses on the cheek, and he found that if he wound his arms around her waist while she was sorting letters, she’d let herself lean backwards into him. Hesta, in the meanwhile, found out that she could take his hand in public without protest (though he _did_ flinch in surprise the first time), and that she could no longer get away with lying awake at night without him reading to her until she fell asleep on his lap on the next day. Fenris even caught her in his arms the next time she attempted the banister trick, and that was a shock to both of them.

But, their progress did not come without rough weeks. During one such time, Meredith had been relentless in her letters, and their adventuring resulted in a sprained ankle for her and a couple of nicely bruised ribs for him, neither of which was worth the (notably false) lead Isabela had gotten. They only managed to steal away a couple of hours to spend in peace, each exhausted and in fairly sub-par moods. 

They shared a couch in the library, but not a headspace. Fenris was busy reading, _trying_ to forget about the scent of spider guts yet again, and Hesta was throwing Meredith’s letters methodically towards the little fire she’d started inside a steel pot. They sat just slightly apart, unsure how to approach _both_ of them being ill-tempered and exhausted. Much to Hesta’s surprise, Fenris was the first to try and clear the air in the room.  
“This book will not stop talking about how green Ferelden is. All I saw when I passed through was mud.”  
“That’s because that novel takes place in one square foot atop a hill near Redcliffe. Most of it _is_ mud.”

Fenris managed half a laugh. Hesta tossed another letter. Hesitantly, he moved his free arm and laid it across the back of the couch, not yet daring enough to touch her, not when her eyes were so far away. 

“It seems I’ve run out of kindling,” she said finally, and slumped against Fenris with a sigh. He relaxed, and took the cue to drop his arm down to wrap about her shoulders. “Finally. I was wondering when you’d do that.”  
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be touched.”  
“So long as you let me know when _you_ don’t want to be, I’ll let you know when _I_ don’t want to be. Deal?”  

Hesta looked up to find he was already looking at her, but she was caught _completely_ off-guard by the way the corner of his mouth tugged upwards. Were they not both scowling a moment ago?  
“That sounds fair to me.”  
“You know, my head actually stops working when you look at me like that.”  
“You’re implying it worked in the first place.”  
“I’m fairly convinced that if you keep smiling, you could say just about anything without even remotely offending me.”  
“Not a single clever thing to say in response?”  
“Not a single thing.”  
“Who knew the Champion of Kirkwall had a weakness?”  
“Certainly no one would have guessed ‘elves with pretty eyes’ on the first try.” 

He kissed her before his head fully registered his intent to, the lack of distance between them offering no time to think clearly for either of them. Romantic as the gesture was, it didn’t last long before she started giggling.  
“What is it?”  
“And here I thought _I_ was the impulsive one.”  
“I’ve been taking lessons.”  
“So it seems.”  
“Do you mind?”  
“I’m fond of surprises.” 

When Fenris kissed her again, she slung her leg over his and wound up straddling his lap, and suddenly in far less of a mood to giggle. Perhaps dispelling their sour moods was less of a challenge than he'd originally bargained for.  
“You know, Bodhan took the rest of the house to help him clean the cellars and Aveline has the dog. This may be the last we’re alone for some time.”  
“Unless we take an arduous ten-minute stroll across hightown to a _particular_ abandoned mansion.” Hesta rolled her eyes at the suggestion, though she still held his face gently between her hands.  
“It’s so hard to be suggestive when you’re set on being cheeky.” And still, she laughed when the book he had been holding was tossed to the ground. “That’s more like it.”  
“Not going to put out the fire first?” Hesta scoffed in response, already busy undoing the ties on his tunic.  
“Not while I’m busy trying to start this one,” she said, but his hands were already making their way up the skin underneath her robe. It seemed that, whatever they had, fragile as it was, was slowly becoming the easiest thing either of them knew.


End file.
